(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #245 - Parenting: No
children, it is the mother to drink? (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation]
"A child if I want, when I want". The feminist slogan chanted in major events for the
right to abortion, now sounds like a vow fulfilled half. If we can say that it is pretty
much good for the "when I want," the "if I want" yet to win. When will women they exceed
the level of the mothers? ---- "You'll see when you have children! " That one has never
heard that phrase (or its variant "And you, when did you there food?") throws the first
IUD. Although no law forcing women to have children, the social pressure is such that it
is often like. While it requires very rarely to women why they want children, when you do
not want (or even when we are not really sure) you better have a strong case to
present[1]. ---- Retention of women in the role devalued the care of children happens in
many societies by the absence of diffusion or prohibition of contraceptive methods
allowing them to control their fertility. If in France there are, at least on paper,
guaranteed access to these methods, you have to see in the pressures on women who do not
want children, the expression of a rather anti-feminism primary since it is not to think
about women other than in their reproductive role especially when they are told without
mother could not be a "real woman".
And the maternal instinct in?
So for women, natural beings par excellence, the ultimate fulfillment depends on the
fulfillment of the maternal role. This is the idea ingrained that any woman normally
consists feels desire for children. Some social science disciplines (sociobiology and
evolutionary psychology head) strive to demonstrate the existence of the maternal instinct
in women with questionable methodologies, such as extrapolating the results of studies
conducted on animals, humans. This is the case studies on the role of oxytocin, a hormone
secreted especially during childbirth, which would promote the development of attachment
between "mother" and "child"... in voles. Simplifying the extension of these theories in
the media gives grist to the well-held view that women as would naturally better able to
raise, educate, love children[2]. Here's how the "science" endorse the highly unequal
distribution of parental roles: it's not that men do not want to care for children as well
as women, but still, they are not programmed to the contrary women.
Can you be a feminist and want children?
Theorists of patriarchy have highlighted the key role of motherhood as compulsory destiny
for women in the production and perpetuation of inequalities between women and men. And it
is true that in the present state of things, the arrival of a child in a heterosexual
relationship tends to increase inequalities, professionally or distribution of domestic
work. Does the solution happen then by a strike bellies, unrestricted, general? We believe
it is no less authoritarian to forbid women to have children than force them. You guessed
it, but the question is initially to balance obligations between parents more equality.
And in the longer term, could not imagine that parenting can be realized in broader
frameworks than the single family home?
Aur?line (Toulouse)
[1] For a sociological analysis of the pressure exerted on people (women and men) who do
not want children, we read the book of Charlotte Debest, the choice of a life without
children , PUR, 2014; or listen to the edition of the show Mutants France Inter on 8 July
2012, Andr?e Agathe, Nathalie and Charlotte Six Debest.
[2] On this subject we read the very clear article, "Maternal Instinct, science and
post-feminism" by Odile Fillod allodoxia on the blog.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Parentalite-Pas-d-enfant-c-est-la
